Welcome to my little place on the net. I have moved this site a few times and each time it was a major PITA with all the pics etc, and before I registered the domain and moved to a real hosting site, I was using the space allotted by my internet service provider. I soon reached the full capacity and wanted to add more information, so I migrated most of the pics to a free picture hosting service. The site offers commercial web hosting and many other resources and since they let me keep my pics there for free, I'll give them a plug here. The place is called XS.TO . While initially they were a great place for storing pics, later they deleted most of my pics for no good reason, the recently I found that they had put huge ad banners advertising their site in place of all of the dead links.Those things were made with the most rudimentary of tools. Basic hand tools and homeowner type power tools such as a handheld circular saw, a ¼ inch router, and a jig saw. But all of that stuff is for another page and time.
Now things have changed. I retired from my first carreer and am well on the way with my second one. The kids have all gone away, multiplied, and come back, and have now all gotten back on their own again. The grocery bills and utility bills have gone way down. The guest bedroom is now a guest bedroom, and we've even got a spare bedroom. We still have to rescue them occassionally, but that's alright, too. So now I've got this windfall of time and a bit of money. What better way to use up some of both than to finally do stuff that I really enjoy.
I've slowly bought better tools to replace or to augment the ones I already had. I've got half of a two car garage to keep them in, and although it's getting crowded, it's better than having to work outside and put everything away each time. It's not a million dollar shop like the ones you see on the DIY shows, but I do have the basics and even some of the not so basics. I have also learned that we made do with what we have, until we can get more.
My first shop was a big ugly plywood monster that sat on the patio of the apartment in which we lived. The bench folded up to enclose the front of the thing. I had a cheap jig saw, a handheld circular saw and later got a router. I had a few chisels and some other hand tools and some C clamps. I cut a slot in the bench and rigged up a mount for the circular saw under the table so that the blade extended up above the table top. With a straight piece of wood and a couple clamps, it made a serviceable table saw for ripping. Crosscutting was generally done with the circular saw by hand using a couple of home made crosscut jigs. The router got its own hole in the bench and served as a shaper.
As time went by I got an 8" tabletop table saw and a small 3 wheel band saw, a table drill press and a lathe. I made a lot of small things with those tools, but it was difficult to work because I had to drag everything out of a storage shed, work outside, and put everything back when I quit for the day. With the exception of the lathe, all of those benchtop tools have since been replaced with better equiptment. The circular saw gave out after many years of abuse and has been replaced, the router is still in service, but doesn't see much use since I got a new, bigger one. The chisels still get used, but I've gotten a set of matching ones that I use for wood, the old ones get used for all of those other things we use chisels for. I'm even on my second scrollsaw, a tool I did not think I wanted or needed, but has become one of the busiest of all of my tools. One thing about wood working is that even after you have all of the tools you need, you'll never have as many as you want.